Yes 100%. This is partly the consequence of the self-image that a very small subset of public intellectuals have of themselves--Stanley Fish used to patrol this street; Yascha Mounk does it now. This idea that they have that the public sphere is about (mostly) men making everybody else uncomfortable by Being So Contrarian and taking the discomfort of other people as validation that they must be right. It's a kind of caricature of the Habermasian idea of the public sphere as a domain where vast, unemotional intellects challenge one another in entirely rational ways and are unmoved by any feelings that result. Not only is this not how most people engage in conversations where they're aware that someone on the other side of the disagreement is feeling very tender or uncertain about the issue at hand, it's not even a good description of how these supposedly rational, distanced figures react to disagreement--they don't welcome it and enjoy it, they slap it down hard or ignore it imperiously, they're as sensitive and fragile most of the time as a newborn butterfly--overreacting to even the least kind of challenge. The only time you'll find them in disagreement is when a narrow-range organization like Heterodox Academy arranges with exquisite choreography a debate between them and someone who only slightly disagrees with them.
For the rest of us, disagreement, especially across wide divides, is a profoundly worrisome thing emotionally and intellectually. That's not because we're suddenly all sensitive snowflakes fretting about cancellation--read ANYTHING about the history of democratic public spheres and you constantly come across people who were good friends or close acquaintances who hovered and fretted at the edge of articulating a disagreement that might mean they'd have to stop being close. Or who worried about hurting someone they valued or even strangers they'd never met. That was a commonplace problem for public intellectuals for generations and now suddenly we've got a small number of people imagining that we have had and should continue to have a public sphere where you shouldn't have to care who you're hurting or what other people will think of you if you say something that seems harmful or callous.
Yes 100%. This is partly the consequence of the self-image that a very small subset of public intellectuals have of themselves--Stanley Fish used to patrol this street; Yascha Mounk does it now. This idea that they have that the public sphere is about (mostly) men making everybody else uncomfortable by Being So Contrarian and taking the discomfort of other people as validation that they must be right. It's a kind of caricature of the Habermasian idea of the public sphere as a domain where vast, unemotional intellects challenge one another in entirely rational ways and are unmoved by any feelings that result. Not only is this not how most people engage in conversations where they're aware that someone on the other side of the disagreement is feeling very tender or uncertain about the issue at hand, it's not even a good description of how these supposedly rational, distanced figures react to disagreement--they don't welcome it and enjoy it, they slap it down hard or ignore it imperiously, they're as sensitive and fragile most of the time as a newborn butterfly--overreacting to even the least kind of challenge. The only time you'll find them in disagreement is when a narrow-range organization like Heterodox Academy arranges with exquisite choreography a debate between them and someone who only slightly disagrees with them.
For the rest of us, disagreement, especially across wide divides, is a profoundly worrisome thing emotionally and intellectually. That's not because we're suddenly all sensitive snowflakes fretting about cancellation--read ANYTHING about the history of democratic public spheres and you constantly come across people who were good friends or close acquaintances who hovered and fretted at the edge of articulating a disagreement that might mean they'd have to stop being close. Or who worried about hurting someone they valued or even strangers they'd never met. That was a commonplace problem for public intellectuals for generations and now suddenly we've got a small number of people imagining that we have had and should continue to have a public sphere where you shouldn't have to care who you're hurting or what other people will think of you if you say something that seems harmful or callous.